Polls: Immigration reform could aid GOP

A trio of polls in key GOP-held House districts being released Thursday show that voters overwhelmingly back immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, and suggest the Republican Party would improve its image in these predominantly Latino areas if Congress passes a rewrite of U.S. immigration laws.

The polls, conducted in the districts of California Republican Reps. Jeff Denham, Devin Nunes and David Valadao on behalf of advocacy groups, are meant to pressure them on enacting immigration reform, which generated much momentum earlier this year but sputtered when the debate moved to the House.

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More than 70 percent of likely voters in all three districts said they would support a bill that mirrored the comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate in June, according to the polls. And in the three districts, 69 percent of voters said they would favor a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the United States, as long as the applicants paid fines, learned English, passed background checks, and waited at least 13 years. That’s the pathway sketched out in the Senate bill.

All three districts, located in California’s Central Valley, have populations that are all at least 40 percent Latino. Valadao’s district is 70 percent Latino.

A majority of voters in each district also said they would have a more favorable view of Republicans if Congress passed comprehensive immigration reform. For example, 54 percent voters in Denham’s district said they would find the GOP more favorable, while 19 percent they would find the party less favorable.

Of the three Republicans, the lawmaker who saw the most potential electoral gain from immigration was Denham, according to the polls. Forty-three percent of voters in his district said they would be more likely to cast a ballot for him if he sponsored legislation with a pathway to citizenship, while 26 percent said it would make them less likely to do so. For 25 percent of voters, it would make no difference.

“It just affirms that people want action,” Lynn Tramonte, the deputy director of America’s Voice, said in an interview of the polling results. “They want Congress to work together, not work against each other and immigration could potentially be a comeback issue for the two parties.”

The automated poll was conducted by the GOP firm Magellan Strategies for a coalition of pro-reform groups including the California affiliate of the PICO National Network, a grassroots advocacy organization, and America’s Voice. The data was provided first to POLITICO and will be released widely Thursday afternoon in conjunction with news conference in California with immigration advocates.

The three polls were conducted Oct. 7 and 8, surveying roughly 570 to 690 likely voters in each of the three districts. The margin of error for the three polls ranged from plus or minus 3.7 percent to 4 percent.

America’s Voice plans to conduct similar polling in additional Republican-held districts later this year.

Denham and Valadao have been outspoken this week about pushing Congress on comprehensive immigration reform, appearing at a pro-reform rally Tuesday that attracted thousands of demonstrators to the National Mall. Separately, Denham appeared with key faith leaders at a Capitol Hill news conference calling for immigration reform.

Neither lawmaker has signed onto a House Democratic immigration reform bill released last week, which largely resembles the Senate’s comprehensive reform legislation. Republican leaders in the House have long said that bill was dead on arrival in their chamber, and the Democratic legislation is largely a pressure tactic on their GOP counterparts to move more promptly on immigration reform.

Instead, House Republicans have opted for a piecemeal approach composed of multiple bills, each focusing on a singular issue in immigration reform.

Tramonte said the actions this week from Denham and Valadao were encouraging, but that advocates demanded more from them – such as an effort to pressure their own leadership on reform or to sponsor key immigration bills.

“Something that Denham and Valadao and others need to hear is that you need to support something,” she said. “You need to take action.”